


Against the Rain

by ValmureEld



Series: I Tried Not to Get Into the Witcher and Look Where That Got Me [18]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Depression, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief, Grieving, Injury, Near Death, Near Death Experiences, So much angst, Well - Freeform, Whump, emotional angst, hopeful ending at least, hurt with some comfort, let Regis have his friends, not all sad, not even kidding the angst is unreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-09 16:24:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13485309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValmureEld/pseuds/ValmureEld
Summary: Regis can't stand to see Geralt hurt, even if all he's protecting at this point is a body.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sweet gods apparently I can't see a picture of a vampire taking injury to protect a human without waxing crazy poetic about it later. (See my Castlevania track record) 
> 
> This fic was inspired by this *incredible* painting: http://velvettodraws.tumblr.com/post/169304563872/ahhh-its-wreck-your-favourite-character-oclock
> 
> Seriously I can't with Regis and Geralt. I have too many feelings.

Regis finds Geralt's body in the middle of a battle field, and among the roar of swords and hoofbeats he can't tell if there is anything of the spirit left inside.

Still, as a deadly whistle fills the air, he doesn't hesitate. He throws himself against the crumbling wall, covering Geralt's body with his own as a dozen arrows strike through him and stay. He shudders, a pained groan drooling through his teeth with the blood that drops down to splatter on Geralt's white head.

And still Regis doesn't move. He doesn't dare close his eyes either, staring down intently at Geralt's body and begging him in his silence to please move, to please not be dead. Not yet. He isn't ready to say goodbye yet. Only that morning he'd traded a smile and a laugh with the Witcher, reminiscing old memories as they crossed a field touched by the dawn and he just isn't ready for peaceful moments like that to end.

He isn't ready to lose the only friend with whom he has an open heart and a shared past.

It isn't right for Geralt's life to end so crudely, not when he still has so many years owed him.

Another volly of arrows strikes down a different part of the terrain and the grumble of battle moves away, leaving them in the hush of a dying landscape under a darkening sky.

For the briefest moment Regis lets his eyes close and he sputters weakly as blood drools down his throat. His knees can no longer hold him and they fall into the muddy dirt, his claws leaving scars in the stone as his fingers rake down. He is sitting now, straddling Geralt's thigh, barely keeping his body off of Geralt's as he leans in with his palms braced either side of the Witcher's head.

He still hasn't moved. His eyes are closed, white eyelashes barely visible against pale cheeks, his head bowed. Chin resting against a chest plated in armor it's impossible for Regis to see any sign of life.

And he can hear nothing.

Despair settles heavy across his shoulders and the points of the arrows grating against his bones are the only things keeping him aware. He curls in on Geralt, no longer having the strength to support himself. He is a pitiful, crumpled thing, laying with his cheek against Geralt's chest.

They stay like that all night. Regis' blood grows tacky and cold against Geralt's armor, and Regis passes into darkness.

It is the warmth of morning that wakes him. The warmth of morning and the memory of life.

He jerks, sucking a pained breath as he raises his head. The spaces between his joints creak and he feels like dry sand inside. The arrows that have settled in the long hours twinge against his flesh and a tear strikes down his cheek to touch Geralt's quilted tunic.

He doesn't want to move. Doesn't see the point. He will stay here. He will stay here and become Geralt's tomb.

A vampire to mark a witcher's grave.

His fingers curl apathetically on Geralt's vambrace and Regis shuffles a little closer, laying his head against Geralt's shoulder this time. A long, dusty sigh falls out of him and he closes his eyes, fully intending never to move again.

Geralt though, has other plans. In the quiet of a settling battlefield, in the emptiness filling Regis from bone to soul, there is another sound.

It is faint. Far too faint for the strong body it needs to sustain, but it ripples through anyway.

Regis' fingers twitch around Geralt's wrist, gripping slightly tighter as his eyes crack open. He doesn't breathe, waiting for that flutter to come back.

“Come back,” he whispers, his voice a weak, pitiful thing. “Please, Geralt,” he rasps, lifting a trembling hand to rest his claws against Geralt's breastplate.

Beneath, his heart lays quiet, and in Regis' numbness he thinks about how wrong it is. Geralt's heart, a thing of power and of beauty. A piece of majesty crafted so carefully and with such splendor a jewler's work was coal beside it.

That heart, swathed in a weaving of muscle and nerve and meticulously designed membrane. Geralt's body a palace sentenced to decay inside its silence.

“Please,” Regis pleads once more, but his voice is too harsh a sound against his own ears and he goes quiet again.

 _Please_.

At last. At last, someone is listening because Geralt's heart finally answers.

Regis' claws curl against the hardened leather and he breathes in a sob, the arrow shafts bristling together like hollow reeds. He can't care. The pain is numbed now, and he lays there listening intently for the next beat.

When it comes, it is stronger, and Regis finds the will to reach over and wrench one of the arrows from his shoulder. As he casts the shaft away, his body trembles another drop of blood onto Geralt's chest and he watches in a detached kind of way as it traces down.

For each  _thump_ Geralt gives him, Regis plucks another arrow.

Eventually, they are gone, and Regis cradles Geralt's head in his hand, gently pressing it back so that he can look into the unconscious face.

“I will get you home, my friend, I swear it,” he vows, and with the next pulse in Geralt's chest Regis lifts him out of the bloody earth.


	2. Waking Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A follow up scene because a friend seemed very excited when I mentioned maybe adding to this. Once again, poetic experiment.

Regis doesn't know how long he sits there. Time has dissolved, lost meaning, which is funny because as an immortal he never knew it had any in his mind to begin with.

But it did, because now there's a hole where that measurement once was stored, and in its place Regis feels lost apart from the warm hand he hasn't been able to let go of.

Geralt is sleeping, blessedly. He is laying peacefully in the nest Regis has made of the abandoned house's blankets and pillows, arranged carefully so as not to put pressure on his wounds. Regis is sitting at his side, head bowed, holding his hand. 

A lone candle sitting on the nightstand flickers, and Regis stares into it with a blankness in his expression.

Everything happening inside him is happening so deep down he can't quite access it. It'll come up later, he knows, but right then it doesn't matter. Regis has lost his home, lost his freedom in many ways, and lost his brother in Dettlaff. 

He will not lose Geralt. 

He has not lost Geralt.

He carried Geralt limp and quiet across broken miles of war-chewn decay and emerged on the ridge of it at last, the sun peering down at them from late morning in such a way that it felt they were the only living things in the world. 

As Regis sat vigil in the dark and listened to the blood flowing soft and steady through Geralt's veins, he still wondered that. 

Regis himself had stopped bleeding only seven hundred and sixty three of Geralt's heartbeats ago, his many arrow wounds struggling to heal without any kind of sustenance to replenish them. His mouth waters as he closes his eyes and focuses on the thud-thud thud-thud of the valves betraying Geralt's otherwise silent vitality and he feels disgust at himself. 

How can even the basest, most primal parts of himself react to Geralt as a source of food after everything that has happened? He hates it, and as he looks to his right and watches Geralt's eyes twitch in sleep he wonders if he'd even recognize himself in other vampires anymore.

At best, other vampires saw humans as pets. 

Ah well. He hadn't fit in all that smoothly back in his own world anyway. In a pack of disasters though, with a witcher who had feelings and a bard who was brave and a sorceress who loved and a girl who would mark the cosmos, he rather belonged. 

“I don't think you realize what a balm your friendship has been to me, Geralt,” he admits quietly, feeling the need to confess out loud even though he knows Geralt can't hear him. “I don't think I fully realized until I thought for certain it had been ripped away,” he adds, and falls silent, and doesn't speak again as he considers his own realizations. 

It is near dusk again when Geralt opens his eyes, the stump of the candle reflecting in their gold with a glint. He blinks, his brow furrows, and then he looks up at Regis, who is seated near his thigh with his eyes closed and head bowed and clawed hand clasping Geralt's gently. Geralt takes the sight in for a moment before he slowly moves to sit up. His torso is tight with bandages and he hisses through his teeth, his hand tightening on Regis' drawing the vampire into awareness with a sharp intake of breath.

“Geralt,” he blinks his dark eyes, worry etched in a permanent line between his brows. “You're awake at last.” 

“And you were dozing during my vigil,” Geralt said lightly, a small smile in his eyes. 

For the first time since the morning before, Regis cracks a smile and he laughs, but the sound is stunted and strange and he finds himself suddenly wiping at his eyes as he tries to get the tears under control. Geralt looks suddenly very worried, and Regis waves him off. "I'm fine, I only..." he shakes his head, letting out a long sigh and patting Geralt's shoulder. "I only need to stop getting attached to mortals. It is startlingly bad for my personal judgement."

**Author's Note:**

> The present tense thing happened accidentally because SOMEONE (you know who you are) got me to try it and I got snagged. I liked it for the mood of this piece though, especially since it was half experiment the way it went kinda poem-like.


End file.
